Actual Discussion

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Are you tired of going into controversial threads and having people not discuss things, circlejerking, or using emotional responses in place of logic? Us too.

Welcome to Actual Discussion!

DO:

Be civil. This doesn't mean you shouldn't challenge people, just don't be a dick.
Upvote interesting or well-articulated points, even if you may not agree.
Be prepared to back up any claims you make with an unbiased source.
Be willing to be wrong and append your initial post to show a changed view.
Admit when you are incorrect or spoke poorly. Upvote when you see others correct themselves or change their mind.
Feel free to be a "Devil's Advocate". You do not have to believe either side of an issue in order to generate solid points.
Discuss hot-button issues.
Add humour, and be creative! Dry writing isn't super fun to read or discuss.

DO NOT:

Call people names or label people. We fight ideas, not people here.
Ask for sources, and then not respond to the person providing them.
Mindlessly downvote people you disagree with. We only downvote people that do not add to the discussion.
Be a bot, spam, or engage in self-promotion.
Duplicate posts from within the last month unless new information is surfaced on the topic.
Strawman.
Expect that personal experience or morals are a substitute for proof.
Exaggerate. Not everyone slightly to the right of you is a Nazi, and not everyone left of you is a Tankie.
Copy an entire article in your post body. It's just messy. Link to it, summarize, and add your thoughts.

For more casual conversation instead of competitive ranked conversation, try: !casualconversation@piefed.social

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AceTKen@lemmy.ca

jet@hackertalks.com

People prefer to suppress different perspectives rather then engaging - especially on social media (hackertalks.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by jet@hackertalks.com to c/actual_discussion@lemmy.ca

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There is a book called “On Being Certain”, by Robert A Burton who’s a neurologist, discussing how we know what we know. He postulates that the sense of “conviction” has less to do with objective reality and far more to do with “a feeling of knowing.” He also suggests that we are far less self-aware than we think we are.

People see a different viewpoint and their body reactively brings up all the conditioning received from popular advice. Instinctively, they hit the downvote button, thinking that they are rightfully decreasing the noise of a dangerous idea and protecting the less aware.

Most people aren’t interested in debate nor challenging the reality they find themselves in, or even the framing and interpretation of that reality.

Is lemmy supposed to be better then other social media?

How do we make lemmy a more thoughtful place? Or how do we create meaningful spaces on lemmy for thoughtful discussion of opposing views?

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[–] Mastema 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I subscribed to this community because of this post. I'm very interested in which rules would actually promote an online forum where people can express their views most effectively. I've recently been reading about the Paradox of Tolerance in online discussion forums and I'm super interested in that phenomenon, but you raise another interesting question. Are down votes useful information? Is there some other voting method that would better encourage actual dialog?

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 4 points 2 weeks ago

Paradox of Tolerance

This is a bit of a bug bear with me, I think the concept of the paradox of tolerance is often misapplied as a leaver for broad censorship and not its more nuanced original usage in the book. I actually printed out the book to figure out the full context of the original usage, and in that context it makes perfect sense.

Modern usage I've seen to justify

Paternalistic bad think censorship
Denying a moving spectrum of political opponents places to assemble
Brigading
Federation
Vote manipulation
Shut down nuanced political conversations about the motives and incentives of real people as indicated in the news.

What are your thoughts on the modern usage of the Paradox of Tolerance?

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 4 points 2 weeks ago

I think you touch upon a great area: There are many ways to express agreement and disagreement, but downvotes being used as a form of suppression are neither.

In the before times slashdot had a metamoderation system where users were randomly assigned a few votes they could apply, the rarity and distribution made for a reasonable approximation of a fair moderation. However, lemmy differs from slashdot in that there are many different unaligned communities on lemmy where slashdot (and hacker news, and lobsters) are basically a single community with very clear unified interests.

The keys for high quality discussion (not agreement) in a community would be (best guess):

Participation is not chilled, even of unpopular things as long as they follow the community rules
No ad-hominem attacks in the discussion
People of mutual levels of energy and engagement can find each other. (the people who like to cite papers vs the people who like to cite youtube videos)
Little to no grandstanding, not talking past someone just to repeat your point for third party viewers

I suppose what I'm describing is the framework for a debate society or even toastmasters.